The future only makes sense with a break with inherited policies

It all started in January 1989. Organized by the nationalist Milošević regime, a street coup was carried out in Montenegro, which led to the overthrow of the pro-Yugoslav communist government. With the support of gullible and deceived citizens, who served as tools in the hands of the camouflaged Greater Serbia policy, a vassal Montenegrin leadership was installed in the then Titograd. The events that soon followed confirmed that Montenegro had lost the federal sovereignty it had in socialist Yugoslavia. Only the remnants of the former statehood remained of the Montenegrin republic.

The former communists transformed themselves into servants of Serbian nationalism and announced deceptive political and economic reforms under the new name (DPS). Bulatović, Đukanović and Marović became promoters of Milošević's ultimate hegemonic policy, thus opening the door to the anti-Montenegrin campaign and the resuscitation of neo-Chetnik clerical nationalism under the leadership of Metropolitan Amfilohije and the Serbian Orthodox Church. Soon, Montenegro became an integral part of Belgrade's aggressive policy and a military training ground for war campaigns against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A state with a false name and fictitious federalism (the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) is also being created, which, due to its decisive role in the war of aggression and the destruction of authentic Yugoslavia, soon falls under international sanctions and becomes an example of a destructive and criminalized political community. The Montenegrin progressive, sovereignist and pro-Western political minority (Reform Forces, LSCG, SDPCG) is powerless to stop the convincing ideological and party majority that acts as an instrument of Belgrade's war chauvinism (DPS, NS, SRS). Montenegro is experiencing a political, legal, economic and cultural collapse from which it has not recovered to this day.

Only after the twilight phase of Milošević's politics and the split in the DPS, were the conditions created for a gradual departure from the most malignant of all European policies. Đukanović's convert DPS, with the crucial support of sovereignist parties and the short-lived awakening of the NS, seized power and legally began to pursue a policy that went in the direction of the West and state independence. After a decade of political emergency, Montenegro gained a pro-Western executive power, which led to the dissolution of the FRY and the creation of a confederal union called Serbia and Montenegro. Under the auspices of the international community, a democratic state-building referendum was held on 21 May 2006, in which the sovereignist policy won a legitimate majority, thus restoring the Montenegrin state as a constitutionally pro-Western, civil, ecological and democratic republic. The state was restored thanks to the integralism of all state-forming political and social forces, as well as the holders of executive power (DPS/SDP and allies), but also despite the discrediting legacy of the DPS, which for many years shared the disastrous policies and nationalist ideology of its unionist opponents.

Independence represented a historic opportunity to implement a reformist policy that would be dedicated to a legal and just state, an entrepreneurial and open economy, a secular and non-discriminatory society, a democratic and civil political system, an ecological community, and innovations in the fields of education, science, culture, and sports. However, the problem arose when the regime that Đukanović took over, while turning allies into satellites along the way, began to treat the state as party and personal prey, while still dominantly having against it the majority opposition captured by compromised political ideas. At the same time, all alternative political groups that tried to oppose the ruling dichotomy (bad government and worse opposition) were quickly collapsing from within or under pressure from the regime.

The ruling post-referendum policy was evolving between a progressive Euro-Atlantic external orientation (the EU accession process and NATO accession) and a predominantly regressive internal policy that was a typical product of a party-based political system, kleptocratic capitalism and extractive economy, corruption and organized crime, identity manipulation and weak institutional and social progress. Opposing the government that had grown together with the state and prevented a democratic and just transformation of society, there were a few state-building and pro-Western political groups, the media and the critical non-governmental sector, as well as the opposition that was networked with the Serbian Orthodox Church and under the tutelage of official Belgrade.

At the moment when Đukanović's DPS stopped the European integration process by fleeing from facing massive institutional corruption and growing organized crime (DPS often acted as a patron of corrupt and criminal structures), while also trying to clumsily resolve the issue of the usurpation of Montenegrin sacral heritage by the Serbian Orthodox Church, the conditions were created that led to the defeat of DPS in the elections in August 2020. Thus, after decades of controversial rule, DPS became the opposition, while ideologically related political forces embodied in amateurish populism and Greater Serbian clerical nationalism took power, with the so-called civic party (URA) serving as a service. In a short period of six years, three executive authorities changed in Montenegro, reflecting the political disarray into which Montenegrin society had fallen and a mixture of incompetent, agentic, clericalized and demagogic politics.

The fact that the Montenegrin pro-European path has been dynamized under pressure from Brussels does not change the fact that even twenty years after independence, the state and society resemble ruined institutional structures. Partitocracy has been strengthened, economic policy has been reduced to unsustainable spending and the devastation of public funds, party recruitment has experienced exponential growth, while the rule of law has been reduced to the fragile prosecution of former public officials and businessmen who undoubtedly created questionable wealth under the auspices of the former regime. For many years after independence, we had a bad government, a worse electoral majority and an even worse opposition, while today we have a bad electoral majority, a worse government and a half-dead opposition.

Twenty years have been largely wasted thanks to an immature, greedy or fifth-columnist political class, as well as a corrupt, gullible and servile electorate. The consolation remains that the alternative to an independent Montenegro would be an even worse political community dominated by malignant Belgrade politics and the many times ruined state of Serbia.

The period ahead of us makes sense only if the progressive and marginalized political and social minority, which has always existed in Montenegro and was ahead of its time, unites, on a platform of distancing itself from the compromised political class and without any pandering to the decadent electoral majority. Without the decisive and emancipatory minority of the nineties, there would be no independent Montenegro, without a reanimated progressive minority after twenty years of independence, there can be no politics that should give Montenegro a chance that would lead towards fairness, legality and a social order that would represent a systemic break with the acquired political, economic and cultural heritage.

The author is the ex-coordinator of the Movement for an Independent European Montenegro